.
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The Drill Drills On
.
As soon as the three started towards the cabins, Bronze felt that evil was in the air, pervasive as brassy heat. It was so unlike the sweet sounds of the forest around him that he stumbled a little, closing his eyes to ward away the sudden projection.
Cypress's face was in his head, but not as a man, but as a child, with a pouting face and eyes turned downward. The face grew larger and larger in the dark oval of his mind's eye and was no longer the face of a baby, but a man with an arrogant and angry mien. "We will destroy, then, my lord," Cypress said, and the face rippled until it was a small, slightly pear-shaped sphere, and on the sphere were blotches of green and brown for land, and blue and grey for seas, and a soft darkness for clouds, and from the clouds came strange dark objects which fell upon the land and fell upon the sea, and where they fell, great clouds arose, umbrellaing over the earth and the sea; and beneath the bulbous clouds was fire, raging redly and driven wild by wind.
"Cobalion," said Bronze suddenly, "do you think Cypress will use nuclear bombs?"
"What makes you say that?" said Tess.
"I do not know," said Cobalion. "If he wants them, the Djinn will get them. Their manufactories are making weapons of war: lasbeams, bullets, knives kevlar, whatever can make men kill men more efficiently. He won't drop one on you. The Djinn is not sure that the Brick wouldn't be destroyed, and in any case, it would be buried under so many tons of rubble that finding it would be impossible. In war, he doesn't have enough to bury us outright. But if he is defeated, and not destroyed, then I have no doubt that he or his officers will harm us as much as they can."
Bronze continued, "If Cypress does this, sends missiles, it could kill millions of people, destabilize the entire human race. He could wipe out a region as large as Unova, probably. Even if some Unovans survived in sparsely inhabited mountains and deserts, there'd be so much fallout all over the place that their children would be stillborn mutants. Does the Chairman understand what he is doing if he fights Cypress the wrong way? Nobody wants the war to end like that."
"Be kind to the Chairman. It's not for lack of trying to make Cypress see reason," said Cobalion, "but our enemies have no reason left. If he has to fall, he'd just as soon take the human race with him."
"So they send missiles from their bunkers, and the Association returns ours to them, and all for what?" Tess's voice cracked with anger. "Why would their millions of workers agree with this?"
"I think the Alliance's doctrine sees this as an act of punishment, of just retribution. The Association has used up more than their share of the world's energy, the world's resources, and they must be punished," said Cobalion. "They are responsible for the acutely serious oil and coal shortage, the defoliation of trees, the grave damage to the atmosphere, and the Alliance's soldiers are fighting to make Association pay. There have been no mass defections in the Eclipse ranks since Anthien, and it's unlikely that there ever will be."
"Hopefully it won't come to that," said Bronze. "What is the Association doing right now?"
"Mobilizing," said Cobalion. "Their whole strategy rests on finding where Emrett and Cypress are hiding, and it looks like they'll succeed. It's not a matter of martial skill. It's a matter of population. The Association still has Roria, and the Rorians are the best warrior people, where they get their soldiers. The Alliance will be destroyed, but they have all the momentum for now."
"I hope I'll be at that battle," said Tess. "That's where Jake and Bronze's parents are, right?"
"You will not be there," said Cobalion. "There are greater matters that you and Bronze will wrestle."
"But what?"
"Tess, there is something that your mother would have taught you if she had lived." Then he said in a singsong voice: "Set great store on your heart to ward off the dark. I bind myself today..."
Bronze said in answer:
"I bind to myself to-day,
The Power of God to guide me,
The Might of God to uphold me,
The Wisdom of God to teach me,
The Eye of God to watch over me,
The Ear of God to hear me,
The Word of God to give me speech,
The Hand of God to protect me,
The Way of God to prevent me,
The Shield of God to shelter me,
The Host of God to defend me,
Against the snares of demons,
Against the temptations of vices,
Against the lusts of nature,
Against every man who meditates injury to me,
Whether far or near,
With few or with many."
...
"It was just an old Hisuian prayer of protection," said Bronze sheepishly. "It's quite apt. 'At Sutherland in this fateful hour, I place heaven with all its power.' Yes, by the splendor of Arceus, I place heaven between me and the forces of darkness!"
"Yes, that's what I was thinking of," said Cobalion. "Your mother would have wanted you to hear that."
"But the time for testing is over," she said, then corrected, "From you, at least."
"Nothing has to do with a test."
"I suppose I'm supposed to remember that prayer?"
"It could be helpful," said Bronze, "for our protection in dark days. And if we speak of protection, how are we not in deadly peril? The Alliance may come upon us with all their force. If they want the Brick, they could get it today. Why do they not use my parents for bargaining? Or should I suspect the worst of all?"
"They know you would not give it," said Cobalion. "And you would not. Your parents would prefer it to remain out of their hands even if that meant their dying. And you are protected. Tess, if you were an outside observer tasked with predicting Bronze's path, knowing what you do about him, where we he go after leaving Aredia?"
"Well, he needs to enter the League for a chance at getting the people to make him emperor," she said. "So northward, to Flouruma, where the other Gym is. Under wartime conditions it might have moved; still, I could find out where on the internet. Even if his path wasn't easy to follow, I would just have to wait around the Gym to find him. But the Alliance hasn't done that."
"That is exactly how my kind has helped you. Heaven has come between you and darkness, with all the strength it has. When as old as I am, it is amazingly easy to deceive shadowed minds."
"You deceive?" said Tess. "Wouldn't that be a sin?"
"The Lord often lets me go as a lying spirit in the mouth of men, or a sower of discord. 'Deep Heav'n, wit all th' myght it hath,'" said Cobalion softly. "But what kind of might? It is like fire. It can keep you warm, but if it gets out of hand it can burn your house down. It can destroy forests. It can burn whole cities."
"Strength can always be used to destroy as well as create," said Bronze. "Your power in heaven is used to help and heal."
"I hope," said Tess. "Oh, I hope."
.
.
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Anthien City
.
As Cobalion brought Tess and Bronze through space to Flouruma, Yellow washed up while the other Association executives held a council in the city's under-chambers. "Well," said the Chairman as Yanase concluded reading from her notes. "That is the plan for the next month, and everything in it seems to be objective."
"Objective?" said Pokedex Holder Green. "I don't understand, Sir. You don't mean they could really have a...a thing like that?"
"We saw it take Cypress over, didn't we all?" said Blue. "What do you think about it, Crystal?"
"Oh yes, it's possible," said Crystal. "It's a horrible thought, but important to relate. You see it's like an old experiment with animals' heads. They do it often in laboratories. You cut off a cat's head, maybe, and throw the body away. You can keep the head going a bit if you supply it with blood at the right pressure."
"Weird!" said Gold.
"Do you mean, keep it alive," said Pearl.
"Alive is an ambiguous word. You can keep all the functions. It's what would be popularly called alive. But a human head, and consciousness? I don't know what would happen if you tried that. Cypress is a head without a body, a man with a chest."
"It has been tried," said the Chairman. "A Kalosi tried it before the Terramist War. With the head of a criminal."
"Is that a fact?" said X with great interest. "And do you know what result he got?"
"It failed. The head simply decayed in the ordinary way."
"I've had enough of this, I have," said Y rising and abruptly leaving the room.
"Then this filthy abomination," said Yanase, "is real, not only a nightmare." Her face was white and her expression strained. Her husband, Mr. Bertliz's, face, on the other hand, showed nothing more than that controlled distaste with which a gentleman of the old school listens to any disgusting detail when its mention becomes unavoidable.
"We have no evidence that Cypress's head has been chopped off or anything," said Crystal. "I'm only stating facts. Our current hypothesis of disembodiment might be possible."
"And what about this Djinn business," said Black, "this sort of evil spirit? Are we saying he's been possessed?"
"You see it might be true," said Yellow, walking into the council.
"I'm not sure that I do."
"You can guess what it would be," said Crystal. "Once the Djinn got Cypress kept alive, the first thing that would occur to something like that would be to preserve the body. What's it doing to Cypress now I don't want to think about. It will try all sorts of stimulants. And then, maybe, they'd ease open the skull cap and just..." She went a little green.
"Just what?"
"Just let the brain boil over, as you might say," said Crystal. "That's the idea, I don't doubt. A cerebral hypertrophy artificially induced to support a superhuman power of ideation. But it isn't at all probable that any such hypertrophy would actually increase Cypress's thinking power."
"That seems to me the weak point," said Platinum. "I should have thought it was just as likely to produce lunacy or nothing at all. But it might have the opposite effect, especially with Eclipse super-science. I'll have to ask my sister."
"Moon's coming?" said Yellow. "When?"
"She will be arriving in our Research Division the next week," said Platinum. "I tore my hair out when I heard of it, but she's set on it, and what's more is that we need people like her."
There was a thoughtful silence. "Then what we are up against," said Crystal, "is a rogue professor's body possessed by some creature, increased in power to super-human proportions and experiencing a mode of consciousness which we can't imagine, but which is presumably a consciousness of agony and hatred. This professor has a degenerate madman using witchcraft as his right-hand man, and an organization with millions of members that are currently trying to destroy our society and way of life."
"It's not certain," said Professor Rowan, "that there would be very much actual pain to Cypress. Some from the head, perhaps, at first."
"If Cypress is there anymore," said Ruby.
"What concerns us much more immediately," said the Chairman, "is to determine what conclusions we can draw from this carryings-on with Cypress's possession and what practical steps should be taken on our part to defeat him."
"It tells us one thing straight away," said Crystal.
"What?" said Black.
"That the enemy movement is supernatural. To get that Djinn they must have been hand in glove with at least one god or major spirit."
Blue rubbed his hands. "Crystal," he said, "you have the makings of a logical thinker. But the deduction's not all that certain. Trickery and Pokemon might account for it without actual devilry."
"It tells us something in the long run even more important," said the Chairman. "It means that if this possession is really successful, the Eclipse people have for all practical purposes discovered a way of making themselves immortal." There was a moment's silence, and then he continued: "It is the beginning of what is really a new species, the Chosen Controllers who never die. They will call it the next step in evolution. And henceforward, all the creatures that you and I call human are mere candidates for admission to the new species or else its slaves, perhaps its food."
"The emergence of the Bodiless Men!" said Yanase. "Or no 'men' at all."
"Very likely, very likely," said Gold. "But there's no good at all applying the forces of rhetoric to make ourselves frightened or hacking our own heads off our shoulders because some other fellows have had the shoulders taken from under their brains, so to speak. I'll back the Chairman's Head, and yours, Dr. Yanase, and my own, against Cypress's, whether we find that the brains are boiling out of it or not. Provided we use our own heads. I would be glad to hear what practical measures on our side are suggested. The war is going poorly."
With these words he tapped his knuckles gently on his knee and stared hard at the Chairman.
"It is," said Ruby, "a question I have ventured to propound before."
A sudden transformation, like the leaping up of a flame in embers, passed over Crystal's face. "Can the Chairman not be trusted to produce his own plan in his own time, Gold?" she said fiercely.
"By the same token, Crys," said he, "can the Chairman's council and the Pokedex Holders not be trusted to hear his plan?"
"What do you mean, Gold?" asked Diamond.
"Mr. Chairman, sir," said Gold. "You'll excuse me for speaking frankly. Your enemies have provided themselves with this Djinn, who we think is growing in strength to do something devilish. They have taken possession of many cities and they're in a fair way to make us declare absolute martial law. And still you tell us it is not time to move till we find their base of operations. If you had taken the advice of the council to use force over a month ago, so I hear, we would have had an army all over this Rorian continent by now and maybe a few Eclipse leaders in jail cells. I know well what you'll say: that those are not the right methods. And maybe not. But if you can neither take our advice nor give us anything to do besides respond to attacks as they come, what are we all sitting here for? Have you seriously considered sending us away and getting some other colleagues that you can work with?"
"Dissolve this council, do you mean?" said Steven Stone.
"I do," said Gold.
Yanase looked up with a smile. "But," she said, "the Chairman has no power to dissolve it."
"In that case," said Gold, "I must ask what authority he had to bring it together?"
"I never brought it together," said the Chairman. "I survived an assassination attempt only days ago. Be kinder." Then, after glancing around the company he added: "There is some strange misunderstanding here! Were you all under the impression I had selected you?"
"Were you?" he repeated, when no one answered.
"Well," said Crystal, "as regards myself I fully realize that the thing has come about more or less unconsciously, even accidentally. There was no moment at which you asked me to join a definite movement, or anything of that kind. That is why I have always regarded myself as a sort of camp follower. I had assumed that the others were in a more regular position."
"You know why Yanase and I are here, Sir," said Mr. Berlitz. "We certainly didn't intend or foresee how we were going to be employed."
Rowan's stern features relaxed into a broad grin. "I see what you're driving at," he said. "We've all been playing blind man's buff, I doubt. But I'll take leave to observe, Chairman, that you carry things a wee bit high. I don't just remember how you came to be called Chairman: but from that title and from one or two other indications a man would have thought you behaved more like the leader of a military organization than a politician."
"He is the Chairman," said Yanase. "Do you think he would claim the authority he does if the relation between all of us depended either on your choice or his? You never chose him. I never chose him. He never chose us. Even the great gods whom I serve never chose him. You and I have not started or devised this: it has descended on us: sucked us into itself, if you like. It is, no doubt, an organisation: but we are not the organisers. And that is why he has no authority to give any one of you permission to leave this high council."
"I have no plans," said Gold, "of leaving this city if anyone wants me to stay."
"But as regards the general hypothesis on which the Chairman appears to be acting and the very peculiar authority you claim he has," said Crystal, "I absolutely reserve my judgment. You know well, Mr. Chairman, in what sense I have, and in what sense I have not, complete confidence in yourself."
The Chairman laughed. "Heaven forbid," he said, "that I should claim to know what goes on in the two halves of your head, Gold, much less how you connect them. But I know (what matters much more) the kind of confidence I have in you. But won't you keep sitting? There is much more to be said."
"That Tercano boy is missing," said Rowan. "If he had any sense he'd be here with that other girl. I don't know why he left. Perhaps he thought that we were his imaginary persecutors. Of course, if that's true, nothing we say to him will do any good."
"He's in Aredia, and beyond your reach," said Yellow with a fierce glare. "I never trusted your plans concerning him, and you were a fool for thinking he could be useful for the Association."
"I've heard reports that you know nothing of," said Rowan, his cheeks inflamed. "He's with that bandit king Ryan, and working with war criminals, Pryce and Lance. He's left, but left an army of thousands of loyal savages behind. Was this your plan? I know about the skycopter. Did you want him to get a mercenary military of barbarians?"
"I know nothing about an army or a skycopter," said Yellow. "The Aredians will follow whoever they wish. Don't doubt that Bronze would be clever enough to get them on his side. They are a very superstitious people, and Tercano knows how to employ superstitions to his benefit."
"Hold on," said Black. "What exactly would you have done, Rowan, if Bronze was still here?"
"Yes, I think we ought to know," said Pearl, standing. "Have you become a smaller man, Rowan? Meddling in the business of Pokedex Holders when it doesn't concern you?"
"Be civil, now!" said Rowan, and his voice had lost its deep quality and was wavering fast. "I never meant to harm the boy. Perhaps he would have conceded to help us, even to be our puppet. He's not the type to be ruled, I've read, but...Chairman, sir, you see the benefits! The Rorians would have one of their own as a leader."
"What on earth are you talking about?" said the Chairman.
"Well, here we've all been working on your behalf," said Rowan. "I thought we'd get him into our circle, start flattering and soothing him down. When I heard he was coming to Anthien I thought this plan had a shot of succeeding. You were talking about giving me the appointment originally intended for reining in provincial leaders and waiving the rights of existing ones. Not a cloud in the sky: and then you have Yellow take an hour's chat with him, barely an hour, in fact, and in that time" (he stood and pointed at Yellow) "you've managed to undo it all. He runs away and we're at war! I begin to think you are insane!"
"What could I have done to disturb him?" said Yellow.
"Well, you ought to know! Did you tell him how to escape the city?"
"Yes, I did. What about it?"
"And is that why he left?"
"Bronze Tercano is the Emperor of Logaria and can make his own decisions!" cried Yellow.
Rowan whistled. "Don't you see, honey," he said, gently rapping the arm of his chair with his knuckles, "that you could hardly have made a worse mistake? It was a most terrific concession for him to get, a path out of Anthien that didn't lead to us. Anyone more loyal would have not done it. You might have known he'd be worried about our power. I'll bet he's burbling away to the Woodhall girl who follows him around about his lack of confidence in the Association, all while she bats her eyes! Says he's 'hurt': which means that we soon will be! He will take us as a rival and not an ally."
"You regard him the same way?" said Ruby.
"Of course not! He's powerless compared to the Association. It takes more than a few desert nomads to make an army."
"But that is sheer madness, what you were planning," said Pearl. "Using him as emperor? That would never go over well."
"Why the hell couldn't you have kept your mouth shut about any way out of the city?" roared Rowan at Yellow. His veins bulged like straws at his neck and his face was cherry red. "You shouldn't have known about my plan till now!"
"Isn't that my own business?"
"Did you guess? Tell me!"
"Yellow is allowed to make her own conclusions, Rowan," said Yanase, "but I had not expected you to lose your temper. This comes from the Enemy. Such crooked talk he loves: friend pitted against friend, allies estranged, evil done in a confusion of hearts. We must not let him destroy us from the outside and from within."
"Well, what is Tercano doing now?" said Oak. "He's either gone insane, or he's trying to get more Gym Badges. For those here who are not aware and do not have a comprehensive idea of the motivation behind the Chairman's decision to not shut down the Rorian League effective immediately, perhaps he could tell us."
"And I will!" said the Chairman. "Now, goodwill toward us in the Rorian population was always very straight to be found. This must change if we hope to win this war quickly and decisively. The Alliance has little hinterland and population, so they will fight a war to exhaust our spirit. They do not want a League or anything that will give our people something to enjoy. Imagine what would happen if we got rid of a festival witnessed by millions and millions! Complete demoralization on the home front, let alone the military!"
"It's all part of Cypress's strategy," said Yanase. "A side campaign, but effective. The people will hate us if we do not give them the League. They will hate us if we don't. The Alliance will threaten to bomb the stadium or something nasty."
"They already have," said the Chairman. "But we will not be intimidated. The Association will not bend to terrorists. The Rorians must know that we are not afraid."
"Some concerns have been raised for the safety of Gym Leaders and challengers," said Oak. "Some Alliance members are resorting to highway robbing and banditry. Two challengers coming up from Silvent to Brimber were killed only yesterday."
"It will be the Association's duty to establish a military presence across the whole of Roria," said the Chairman tiredly, and in a Sinnohian accent thicker than even Yanase's. "You know that this entire war only began about a week ago. We haven't had time to switch from peacetime to wartime. Some of our leaders refuse to believe that they actually have to fight to survive. Peace has made us flabby, I'm afraid."
"League or not, we won't win till their headquarters is taken," said Gold. "What are we doing to find it?"
"Shouldn't you know?" said Diamond.
"I'm not privy to everything."
"Weren't you listening when the Chairman was going over all of this?" said Crystal.
"I was. He never mentioned anything about what measures we're taking to actually end the war as quickly as possible. I heard a lot about cleaning up places that have already been attacked, and raising steel production, and keeping roads safe. Quite a lot of rinsing the bellies of his interests and nothing about what we actually are going to do." He stood and spoke louder. "Chairman, what can we do? I've had enough of sitting around and talking. Talking's nice for your ladies and the sales of coffee suppliers. But I'm a man, and I want to crack Eclipse skulls, and I want to do it now."
"You are welcome to join the military, Gold, or fight the Alliance as a private citizen," said the Chairman coldly. "In either case, you will not be permitted to remain in this council."
"Then pardon me." Gold left the circle of chairs and went to the elevator door. "If you won't bother to use me, I'll see if someone else wants to have me fight. Why not Bronze? Let's see what he thinks I should do."
"Gold, you will not take orders from Tercano!" said the Chairman. "Come back here, boy, before I..."
The doors opened. Gold looked back at them admirably, his hand on the door to keep them from closing. "That's it, no more civility. Say, Chairman, you really are a college fella, aren't you? Talk just like a book. Holy shit, I don't know what the world's coming to. There's a world that needs fixing, and someone's got the know-how to do it, but it isn't you. Not any of you. Not Rowan, his face as red as a whore's stoplight. Not the police. I've been trying to fix this planet, and now I'm going to talk to Bronze, hear his ideas. You pansies can keep talking. You can even do some real fighting, when you feel like it. But I'm going to go to Flouruma, and I'm going to find Bronze, so I can help him beat the ass off some Eclipse people. Got it?"
"Oh, don't be a baby," said Crystal, rising and striding toward him. "You're just making yourself useless—"
"You were always a handsome woman, Crys," said Gold. The doors shut and Crystal only saw his smile and hand waving goodbye.
"Damn!" said the Chairman. "And I said I had confidence in that impulsive fool."
"We'd better tail him," said Rowan, having recovered much of his earlier composure. "He really will go to Flouruma, and Tercano will gain another ally."
"I'll go," said Ruby. "Bronze knows me a little."
"By all means, be off," said Mr. Berlitz. "But be careful. There's something ominous going on with Bronze. We didn't intend to play him as an actor in our own little drama, at least not most of us. He thinks we do and will distrust every one of us in this room because of it."
"Ominous," muttered Ruby. "An ominous quiet. The Rorians are going to be hoping for a king more than ever. The return of the king: that phrase will become a real thing, and it won't be good for the Association. Mr. Chairman, you and Rowan got us into this mess, and none of us know how to fix it."
.
.
.
Flouruma
.
When they got to the city gates Cobalion dematerialised. "Too many enemy eyes about," he said, "and friendly ones as well. It isn't the fault of humans that you are frightened of me because I am so different. Unnecessary attention for you, anyway."
"You aren't so different from us," said Bronze. "You're a thinking spirit in the brotherhood and body of Arceus. Only fools are scared of you because they think you're different. It's not a good reason."
"Sin is properly confusing," said Cobalion.
"I hoped you would never leave," said Tess. "When you came I just felt so much safer."
"There was never any point that I was not with you," said Cobalion. "Bronze and Jake would not have made it past Silvent without the Swords of Justice. It is only a different mode of body that I will take. Don't be scared."
Then he was gone. But not really, Tess knew, because the air that had once held Cobalion was now filled with a tingling sound, pouring sweet thoughts into her body. Now her ears were open and she could hear the Spirit World, the Unseen World, the gathering, ghosts or spirits, or maybe Deep Heaven itself. But there was another part of it, a dreadful funhouse where all the sideshows ended in death, where all the specially painted bogies were really alive, where evil spirits, where a shattered bottle could start obscenities. It was like the somnolent hum of summer wasps in a ground nest, sleepy, deadly, beginning to wake up. For a moment she was ten thousand feet high, captured between Glory and Hell.
It was a living sound, but not voices, not breath. A man of a philosophical bent might have called it the sound of souls or spirits. Bronze's grandmother, a Logarian woman who had grown up in the backcountry before the turn of the century, would have called it a haunt. A psychic investigator might have had a long name for it, psychic echo, psychokinesis, a telesmic sport. But to Tess it was only the sound of the battle, a grim affray, creaking steadily and ever more closely around her as she became deeper entrenched in Arceanism and thus more dangerous to the Dark Lord: campaigns that now stretched back through time and distance, hungry shadows, unquiet combatants who did not rest easy and were never defeated for long.
Bronze put his arm on her shoulder, moving with the quick and reluctantly hurrying steps of a man who is fighting in a long and bitter war.
...
Outside the forest limits the hills reared huge and pallid green, advancing higher and higher till they became the Frostveil Mountains in the west. Several dozen dirty cabins and trailers with bricks in their wheel wells littered a brown strip of cleared land, clustered under the shadow of a black gate that had been built into the stone of the hills itself. When she saw the trailer camp Tess squeezed Bronze's hand, painfully.
Chairs with their spindly legs were upended on plastic tables covered in black marks. A dissembled microphone stand and a dusty guitar with broken strings were scattered over the dirt path that wound down from the high place where they stood, straight through the camp, and to the high gate. Mounds of shattered glass and upturned sepulchers of dirt littered the field, sometimes marked by a strand of yellow caution tape. A loose metal plate on a trailer roof clanged in the wind. Bronze felt uneasy. The silence was cold and dead.
As they came closer they walked past two men speaking to each other, but they could not understand the words. They looked undead. A third to half their teeth were missing. Tess felt like vomiting. She had heard of this before, even seen it outside of Rosecove, but Quentin had never let her get close to them, never to look at them like this. They were scratching, as some addicts do. The pitiful men had scars everywhere from being beaten and robbed who knows how many times. Their skin looked ashen and sickly. Beside another trailer sat four Alolans, with one Kantoian and another Orreian.
"Drugs are remarkably nondiscriminatory," said Cobalion to Tess, like a disconnected radio. "They take down everybody." She looked at a man with vacant eyes and a face as expressionless as a mask. The man wrapped up a tissue paper speedball, a combination of heroin and cocaine.
For most citizens, walking by these men was like driving past an accident. You wanted to look and not look at the same time. So you sort of half looked and half listened to their whispering whimpering testimony to a life not lived. Bronze was determined to look and listen.
"See those old men, Tess?" said Bronze. "They're probably no more than forty. They're not old, just ruined."
"What have they been taking?" she whispered.
"I've read up on this issue," said Bronze. "I hope to address it once the powers are available to me. Psychoactive berries are popular among the younger generations, but the ancient hard drugs, heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine, still hold the older users as prisoners. Every person in this camp is probably on enough of some kind of drug to kill us both, instantly."
"Why here?" she said. "Why before the city?"
"Well, this isn't the main road in, so the police don't bother to clear them out. These addicts breathe liquor and eat rock. Sometimes rich people from the cities give them food or money, to make them feel better about themselves. This is the real face of the Association: letting the broken people beg for chump change at the gates of the city, so civilized people don't have to deal with them."
"This is hell," said Tess, shaking her head as she watched the men gaze coldly at her. "I mean, not actually, but I can sort of see it, and smell it. Bronze, the Association isn't smart enough to pull off this. It's straight from the devil, right out of hell."
"It is," said Bronze. They were nearly through, and he found himself staring down people, waiting for them to turn their eyes away in shame. "The Association didn't try to make this. No rational person would. But it's the price of modernity. We have bad art, bad addictions, and ugliness everywhere as a penalty for technological development. You can see how the Alliance's stooges think they're doing good. They want to fix this, and think that unmaking everything is the right way to go about. Not that their leaders care."
Bronze cackled, causing a skinny woman to jump. "You hear me?" he shouted to the sky. "When the Eclipse men come here, they'll get rid of you all to fit their 'perfect' world! You had better repent now, or else hell is really going to eat you alive!"
"Egggh, whaddaya?" a shadow called. "Whaddaya want from me?"
"Nothing," said Bronze, "but that your soul be saved."
"Unnh! Unnnh! Unnnhh!"
"Yeggghhh, screw you too, man!" another said, coming out of a stupefied place that no man had gone before.
"Then nothing I say will help you," he said softly. "Cobalion, is there any hope for such captives?"
"Through Arceus all things are possible," said Cobalion, "but it is not within me to break their chains. You do not see the legions of Shadowed warriors around their heads." Tess heard Cobalion's voice and heard the pain, the vacancy, the regrets, the hopelessness
...
With a miserable, rising scream, a ruin only barely a man crawled after Bronze and Tess, his hands outstretched, his feet stumbling against each other like wooden blocks as he screamed for them to stop, to take him, to take the whole world if they wanted to, but only to stop and leave him with a little bit of sanity and light.
"Stop, stop!" He murmured yet once more, "Stop!" but in a feeble and almost inarticulate voice. Loneliness surged over him suddenly and completely. He cried out with sudden wretchedness and honestly wished he were dead. It was his last effort; his legs gave way abruptly under him, as though an invisible power had suddenly overwhelmed him with the weight of his evil conscience; he fell exhausted, on a large stone, his fists clenched in his hair and his face on his knees, and he cried, "I am a wretch!"
"Oh, help him, would you!" cried Tess. "Talk to him, get him up, anything! I hate this place, I hate the Djinn, and I hate the League for making us come here!"
"Get up!" said Bronze fiercely, grasping the wreck by his ear. "Get off your belly! Look at me! How long has it been since drugs bought you? Tell me now!"
Then the man's heart burst, and he began to cry. It was the first time that he had wept in nineteen years. Bronze felt as though he ought to weep with him too, but the man was speaking words, real, clear words. "Please, king, I knew you were the one I had been looking for. I've not found any drugs for a month. The sun's light hurts. I thought I was going to end it. But I will not stop following you till you give me your blessing!"
"In the name of Arceus and by the power of the throne of Logaria, I pardon you," said Bronze, with Tess standing by, who was not a little alarmed. Then he said, in memory of the angelic action of Drake's words, "If you promise me to become an honest man, I buy your soul. I take it away from the spirit of perversity; I give it to the good God."
"Aye," said the man. He looked less of a shell and more like an ordinary drunk: untucked shirt, hair rumpled, cheek stubbly. "Aye, thank you. Can I come with you to the city?"
"Yes," said Bronze, "but you must tell me your name."
"It's Jack, sir."
"I'm Bronze. Jack's strong name," he said, imitating Cobalion. "You will need it. Stand up and look ahead. Do not turn back to the devil's kingdom. Already that life is behind you."
"Thanks, man," said Jack. "I've been seeing how this whole thing works. My memory's been coming back, one bit of a time, but it never helped me use my head to actually get out of here."
"Glad I could help," said Bronze. "In the end we are all responsible for our actions. Tell me about yourself. We've got a long way to go before I can give you a place to rest."
Tears started flowing from the man, and Tess watched as the young man embraced the old with a sort of tenderness that was by far the most feminine thing she had ever seen Bronze do. Not un-manly, she saw. As the visible three walked past the last trailers and toward the gate, an audience of curious addicts watched a fight for purpose and dignity, a fight each of them had lost years ago.
...
Jack has fought in the Terramist Wars, and had an Arcanine that died in the same conflict. During the war he had gotten addicted to ease the pain. "People taking the drugs and shooting the guns," he explained, "they only got themselves to blame. You want to take on the Man like some of the guys here say they do, fine, go slug it out, get smarter than he is, beat him at his own game. But we just hide in the slums and whine while smoking vapors."
"Well, take a good look, Jack, because if that's the life you want, it's behind you," said Bronze.
"If I'm lucky. I mean, if I don't fail again. If I don't end up in a casket before I'm twenty. They're losers back there, man. Their big prize is when somebody drops a cigarette with a half inch left on it. Then they suck that baby down to the filter, and it's like they repaired a car or taught a class or fixed a roof. Like it was some big deal. All the gangbangers, they're losers just like me.
"The guy who was mumbling with you? Name's Petey. I talked to him today. He doesn't remember me. Doesn't even remember how old he is. He just hustles for money, begging off little old ladies that come by. He's still trying to be hip, shirttails out, hat on backwards. Permanent adolescence. Like a twelve-year-old still wearing fuggin' diapers. If this is where I knew I was going, I wouldn't have taken even a toke. Member that, king."
"Jack, I've given you my blessing, so now I need yours," said Bronze. "You knew I was the king, right? Didn't have to think too hard to realize that?"
"Yeah. I remember my aunt's stories about old Logaria. The ruins of the ancient capital are pretty close by."
"I'll be going to those ruins, of course. But I want you to tell everyone you meet that Bronze Tercano, the Emperor of Logaria, has returned. You've become a king's man and have a new purpose. And now I need you, and people like you, to make the Rorians awaken and find out that they are strong."
"Well, old Jack's not very presentable right now."
"When we get to Flouruma I'll get you a meal, a shower, and new clothes. People will take you seriously. Do you get what I'm saying?"
"Yeah, brother. Things are changing. If you're leading this, good for you. Don't throw it away. That's what I did. And now look at me. I haven't been out there since before you were born. It's like prison. Life there is hell. No privacy, always noisy, always television and radio. Threats and fights and hits. Guys drop their soap in the shower and they don't dare bend to pick it up. It's no life."
"Prison?" said Tess. "What for?"
"Selling. That's behind me now, but I'll never get a good job, not now. Little lady, don't go to jail. Guys talk big time, like 'three hots and a cot man, that ain't so bad.' But you get in here and your friends forget about you, just like I forgot about my buddies in jail, my stickman Big Freeze and my homie Trig. The letters come at first. You get a few visits from yo' girlfriend till she finds someone who can touch her. But nobody stay in touch. I had a big rep selling, means nothin' in Securimax Penitentary. You mess up bad and get the double digits, you lose hope, girl, you lose hope. You do time alone, nobody there to help you. You think they yo' friends, but they ghost on you. You get in trouble inside, they put you in solitary. I went three weeks not seein' a human face. They take the staples out of magazines so you can't use them as weapons. Every few years you dress up like a choirboy, spit shine and lotion yourself down, button yo' top button, and try to convince that parole board you're ready for the outside. And then you watch 'em look at the papers, the fights you've had and the drugs you've traded for and the time you popped a guard, and they close those folders, and you know they ain't gonna forgive your sins, no way. Nobody gonna give you another chance.
"It's horrible," said Tess quietly.
"Sure is. Hey, I'll tell everyone that the king's back, just for getting me out of there. But little lady, there's a favor I want from you. Wherever you go, tell your lady friends and your boyfriend and his guy friends that you'd rather have your man be the geekiest guy on the street than the coolest sucker in prison. I'd rather be fryin' the burgers any day than heatin' up the cocaine, 'cause that's what gets you locked up. Some folks say at least the prisoner rules in prison. Well, he don't. No way. We don't hold the keys. We don't carry the guns. We don't set the rules. It's all a lie. You know how long I've gone without seeing the sky? You know what it's like to never see the stars for years? You know what it's like to live in a world without women, girl? Ain't natural. No mamas, no aunts, no sisters, no girlfriends, no wives. Most the guys there dealt drugs and robbed stores to impress the babes. Well, there's no babes here. You tell your boyfriend that. And guys start losin' their manhood, and if you do, they'll break you down, they'll flip you sure as..."
Bronze shot Jack a don't-get-into-the-details look.
"Well, anyways, little lady, it ain't normal. It ain't a good scene." He hesitated. "I don't know what you two are doing. It's not something I want to get into. But ol' Jacks got some advice for both of you. Bronze, make yo' mama proud of you, boy. Make me proud of you." The tears flowed freely now down the rough leather-brown face. "Don't screw up and do something you can't walk away from; don't be like me, wishin' I would have made my mama proud."
.
.
.
They passed through the gate with languid eyes, emerging from the valley of death and into the long responding half-light of a subterranean tunnel. It went on and on till cold mud overtook the thrawn grass and their feet were soaked through. When they reached the city proper, Tess's feet were numb the whole way through. She had not brought warm socks.
Flouruma was dark and had a few hundred houses in the cavern wall that were only half-suggested in the light. Straight through the city the path kept on going, passing below the mountains, then up and up, out into an ancient gorge of the Frostveil Mountains.
Bizhan Dariush was a tall and skinny man with a morose face overtopped with a luxuriant mane of red hair, rare for northern Rorians. Bronze had caught him just as he was leaving the Flouruma police stations, the sanguine face buried deeply inside an Army-issue parka to fend off the underground cold. He was reluctant to do any more work that day no matter how far Bronze had come, and even more reluctant to rent one of his two rooms out to a wild-eyed Alolan man that looked like a drug addict. But when Bronze mentioned the Association and showed him just how stern the heir to Logaria could be, the hotel owner and policeman thawed.
"Sure, he can stay," said Bizhan. "Come back soon, if it's the Gym you're after. But what in creation did you bring this fellow Jack with you for?"
"He is a servant of the empire of Logaria and a king's man, as he will proudly tell you," said Bronze. "He has been officially pardoned."
"Who are you to do that?"
"I am Bronze Tercano."
"Is that name supposed to be enough?"
"It will be."
Bizhan laughed. "I don't believe you. Boy, I'll show you your place. I'll show you good."
"Are you drunk, fool?" said Bronze, getting angry. "Masks off, then! No more interruptions." Then he screamed in wretched terror. The features were gone from Bizhan's face. The face itself was gone, replaced by a circular black hole that swelled and swelled like a dilating iris. And behind the void, the as-yet-unseen face of the shape that chased him down into nightmares, its red eyes widening, blank and homicidal. Oh, he was afraid of what face might come to light when the time for unmasking came around at last. It blotted out everything and he fell forward, beginning to fall, falling, he was—
...
"Is that name supposed to be enough?" said Bizhan.
"Listen, I'll pay you well," said Bronze. "What will you take to house Jack?"
"Nothing less than a thousand units."
"Then it's yours. Thank you."
...
He was awake in a hotel. Up till now, whatever his days had been like, Bronze had usually slept well; this night sleep failed him. He had not gone to the Gym, he had spent the rest of the day keeping out of sight from Tess and Cobalion's specter and doing nothing in particular but think. The wakeful night moved all his fears onto a new level. He was, of course, past the age at which one can have night fears. But now, as the wind rattled his window hour after hour, he felt those old terrors again: the old exquisite thrill, as of cold fingers delicately traveling down his back.
Why had he dreamed of something like that? Why did he give room in his mind for such foul nonsense? And what was behind the rotating void? He was aware of Tess sleeping in another room, uncorrupted when compared to him. Was it really possible to get that kind of clean rest again?
The nightmares were increasing. He woke in the middle of night to the consciousness that his head ached all over but especially at the back. He remembered his life fully, then, as one of the poets said, "discovered in his mind an inflammation swollen and deformed, his memory." Oh, but impossible, not to be accepted for a moment: it had been a nightmare, it must be shoved away, it would vanish away now that he was fully awake. It was an absurdity. Once in delirium he had seen the front part of a horse, by itself, with no body or hind legs, running across a lawn, had felt it ridiculous at the very moment of seeing it, but not the less horrible for that. This was an absurdity of the same sort. Jonathan Rowell Cypress, at the bottom of a big dark hole with him. His own head began to throb so hard that he had to stop thinking.
As he sat up with his thumbs pressed against his eyelids, it occurred to him that he might be experiencing what soldiers experience when coming home from battle. There was a clinical name for it that he knew, post-traumatic stress disorder. He knew his psychology might be affected by what he had seen and done, but it was never a problem till now, if that was the problem at all. What really haunted him? It was the simplest thing to deny any material cause for his night terrors. The feeling of his dagger through flesh did not disturb him, even when cutting off a man's hand in Brimber Volcano. Cypress and Emrett did.
He knew it was true. And he could not, as they say, "take it." He was very ashamed of this, for he wished to be considered one of the tough ones. But the truth is that his toughness was only of the will, not of the nerves, and the fears he had almost succeeded in banishing from his mind still lived, if only negatively and as weaknesses, in his body. Not since he had seen Jake bullied at his private school had Bronze learned to hate anyone with every nerve of his body as he now hated the Eclipse Alliance.
Meantime he must get up. He must do something about his state. His mind had made this decision for him at some moment he did not remember. He must get her, to save his life. All his anxieties about being the League champion or a political had shrunk into insignificance. It was a question of life or death. They would kill him if he lost to them; perhaps torture and behead him...oh God, if only he would really kill Cypress, that monstrous little lump of torture, that agony with a face, which they kept there talking in its black suit. All the minor fears of his life were only emanations from that central fear. He must get revenge; he was never fighting against that very hard and was not fighting at all now.
He felt like a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge (he had always done well on Essays and General Papers) and the first hint of a real threat to his bodily life knocked him sprawling. Why think about such rot, Bronze? You rode the Steelix. Still he felt like a child buffeted by winds under naked heaven. And his head ached so terribly and he felt so sick. Luckily some strong flavored gin helped him shave and dress. He must talk with Cobalion, or he would drown.
"Cobalion, I'm worried," he said.
"I am also worried," said Cobalion, materializing in the bedroom. The god flung back his ethereal mane so that it brushed against the boy's sore face with a silver coolness. "I have become very fond of you, in spite of all your foolishness."
"I have become fond of you, too."
"Close your eyes and be still, now. I'm going to give you a memory to help you."
...
He saw neither Cobalion nor himself. He saw neither the familiar earth with the rocks for star-watching, the woods, the hills, nor the night sky with its countless galaxies. He saw nothing. Nothing. There was no wind to ride or be blown by. Nothing was. He was not. There was no dark. There was no light. No sight nor sound nor touch nor smell nor taste. No sleeping nor waking. No dreaming, no knowing.
Nothing.
And then a surge of joy.
All senses alive and awake and filled with joy. Darkness was, and darkness was good. As was light. Light and darkness dancing together, born together, born of each other, neither preceding, neither following, both fully being, in joyful rhythm. The morning stars sang together and the ancient harmonies were new and it was good. It was very good.
And then a dazzling star turned its back on the dark, and it swallowed the dark, and in swallowing the dark it became the dark, and there was something wrong with the dark, as there was something wrong with the light. And it was not good. The glory of the harmony was broken by screeching, by hissing, by laughter which held no merriment but was hideous, horrendous cacophony.
The breaking of the harmony was pain, was brutal anguish and war in heaven but the harmony kept rising above the pain, and the joy would pulse with light, and light and dark once more knew each other, and were part of the joy. Stars and galaxies rushed by, came closer, closer, until many galaxies were one galaxy, one galaxy was one solar system, one solar system was one planet. There was no telling which planet, for it was still being formed. Steam boiled upward from its molten surface. Nothing could live in this primordial cauldron.
Then came the riders of the wind when all the riders sang the ancient harmonies and the melody was still new, and the gentle breezes cooled the burning. And the boiling, hissing, flaming, steaming, turned to rain, eons of rain, clouds emptying themselves in continuing torrents of rain which covered the planet with healing darkness, until the clouds were nearly emptied and a dim light came through their veils and touched the water of the ocean so that it gleamed palely, like a great pearl.
Land emerged from the seas, and on the land green began to spread. Small green shoots rose to become great trees, ferns taller than the tallest oaks. The air was fresh and smelled of rain and sun, of green of tree and plant, blue of sky. The air grew heavy with moisture. The sun burned like brass behind a thick gauze of cloud. Heat shimmered on the horizon. A towering fern was pushed aside by a small greenish head on a long, thick neck, emerging from a massive body. The neck swayed sinuously while the little eyes peered about.
Clouds covered the sun. The tropical breeze heightened, became a cold wind. The ferns drooped and withered. The dinosaurs struggled to move away from the cold, dying as their lungs collapsed from the radical change in temperature. Ice moved inexorably across the land. A great white Beartic padded along, snuffling, looking for food. Ice and snow and then rain again and at last sunlight breaking through the clouds, and green again, green of grass and trees, blue of sky by day, sparkle of stars by night.
People and Pokemon came. There were sheep on the hills. Then war, and fire on the windy heath, and the Hisuians came in the north with banners of silver and dark blue, and the Logarians in the south in colors of yellow and black. Carnage spread for a thousand years. The darkness that had broken the ancient melody was in Dor Daedeloth, north of Roria, and from that land it spread in all directions. He was plunged into a memory, a memory that had troubled Cobalion. Bronze braced.
He was in a confused, noisy, foul-smelling place. It was daylight, early morning, and the air was thick with smoke that hung, yellow and brown, above the ground. Around him, everywhere, far across the expanse of what seemed to be a field surrounded by mountains, lay groaning men. Banners of serpents and stars and glittering trees lay tattered. A wild-eyed horse, its bridle torn and dangling, trotted frantically through the mounds of men, tossing its head, whinnying in panic. It stumbled, finally, then fell, and did not rise.
Bronze heard a voice next to him. "Water," the voice said in a parched, croaking whisper.
He turned his head toward the voice and looked into the half-closed eyes of an Aredian boy who seemed not much older than himself. Dirt streaked the boy's face and his matted dark hair. He lay sprawled, his plated bronze armor glistening with fresh blood. The colors of the carnage were grotesquely bright: the crimson wetness on the rough and dented metal, the ripped shreds of grass, startlingly green, in the boy's hair. The remains of a black turban of cloth hung on the back of his neck.
The boy stared at him. "Water," he begged again. When he spoke, a new spurt of blood-drenched the coarse cloth across his chest and sleeve.
One of Bronze's arms was immobilized with pain, and he could see through his own torn sleeve something that looked like ragged flesh and splintery bone. He tried his remaining arm and felt it move. Slowly he reached to his side, felt the leather waterskin there, and removed its seal, stopping the small motion of his hand now and then to wait for the surging pain to ease. Finally, when the waterskin was open, he extended his arm slowly across the blood-soaked earth, inch by inch, and held it to the lips of the boy. Water trickled into the imploring mouth and down the grimy chin.
The boy sighed. His head fell back, his lower jaw dropping as if he had been surprised by something. A dull blankness slid slowly across his eyes. He was silent.
But the noise continued all around: the cries of the wounded men, the cries begging for water and for Mother and for death, speaking in togues that were not Bronze's own, but he knew, he knew. Horses lying on the ground shrieked, raised their heads, and stabbed randomly toward the sky with their hooves.
From the distance, Bronze could hear the crying of Logarian men and saw tall lords riding from the deadly field into a city of white stone. Overwhelmed by pain, he lay there in the fearsome stench for hours, listened to the men and animals die, and learned what warfare meant.
Finally, when he knew that he could bear it no longer and would welcome death himself, he opened his eyes and was once again in the room.
Cobalion looked away, as if he could not bear to see what he had done to Bronze. "Forgive me," he said.
"You were there," said Bronze. "You really were there at Atun-Kaah."
"Yes. The Legends of Arceus never shows you the terrible memory of war. You can infer, of course, but Lian, the writer, makes battle sound glorious. Those were the most glorious battles in history, but war is war. I knew him, and he stamped out the bad memories. He only remembered the parts that he enjoyed."
"I wouldn't remember war, either, if I had a choice. This was another lesson, right?"
"Always. You still have to be made sharper before you take yourself out of your sheath. Tess only needed one thing that she couldn't already learn by exposure."
"What do you mean?" he took a pace forward, and noticed that Cobalion could not seem to look at him. "Tell me what you mean!"
Cobalion closed his eyes. "It broke my heart, Bronze, to try to transfer pain to her. It broke my love, and that is the highest pain I can feel. It was my job. It was what I had to do, the way I've had to do it to you. But I couldn't manage it, so I changed the test. That's the reason why I would have had to unmake if I failed, because I had not obeyed."
"What was the test Arceus wanted to give her in the first place? It wasn't the Three Quentins? And why would you be allowed to change it?"
Cobalion shook his head and sighed. "I was meant to give her pain. Not physical pain, not war. But I would give her loneliness. And I would give her loss. I thought of transferring a memory of a child taken from its parents. That was the first one Arceus said to do. I was stunned that He did so.
"I argued among the sons of heaven. Terrakion and Virizion were by my side. Arceus compromised, saying that I could also give her little delights. How I argued! It must have been several months in your time. Arceus doesn't ever lose. He only let me win. I couldn't bring myself to inflict physical pain on Tess. I would rather become Shadowed than do that. But I said to Arceus that already He had given her anguish of many kinds. Poverty, and hunger, and terror. Terror of the Djinn, terror of Cypress, terror of loss."
"Do you think she wasn't brave enough to handle it?" said Bronze. "You're wrong, then."
"I had to do some kind of test for her, Bronze. It was my job. And she had been chosen."
"Your damn job! Your goddam job!" mimicked Bronze in a cruel, sarcastic voice. "Hullo, Arceus! I'll do whatever you like, sir. I will kill people, sir. Old people? Small newborn people? I'd be happy to kill them, sir. Torment them, too. Thank you for your instructions, sir. How may I help you..." He couldn't seem to stop.
"Feelings are not part of my biology," said Cobalion, "but if there is anytime that I could be angry at Arceus for doing something I don't understand, it's now."
Bronze wrapped his arms around himself and rocked his own body back and forth. "What will I do? I can't ever go back! I can't! I can't fight him, never, never."
"First, I will move Bizhan to give you an evening meal. Then you will eat and recover your strength."
Bronze found himself using the nasty, sarcastic voice again. "Then we'll have a sharing of feelings?"
Cobalion gave a rueful, anguished, empty laugh. "Bronze, you and Tess are the only ones I'm allowed to share feelings with. I've been guarding you and sharing feelings for almost a year, even if you didn't know it."
"I'm sorry, Cobalion," said Bronze miserably, feeling wormlike. "I don't mean to be so hateful. Not to you."
"Good. You are learning deeper and deeper emotions than ever before. Anger toward Arceus, even though it is a sin, can lead to a better relationship with him. When you are in the pit of despair and still obey Him, the Enemy has lost. If you have me, I can help prevent you from thinking that Cypress was right."
"Cypress was never, right, even in his better moments. 'The Arceus hypothesis tires me, Bronze,'" he imitated. "'It is good for nothing but to produce shallow people, whose reasoning is hollow. It's all nonsense. God is real. But that might be worse than not. There is no escape from Him. If all is material, my sorrows can quickly be dulled by pills, and then release, cool sleep. But I fear that I am a rat in a trap. If Arceus is a good doctor, then all these pains are necessary. They cannot be unnecessary, and still be, if there is a good god. Then the good doctor will cut, and cut till my heart is ripped in half, and still keep cutting because He loves me. 'God is love!' Ha! Hasn't anyone been to the dentist?"
"Why do I make room in my mind for such filth and nonsense," he thought. "Do I hope that if feeling disguises itself as thought I shall feel less? Aren't all these words the senseless writhings of a boy who won't accept the fact that there is nothing I can do with my suffering except to suffer it? Who still thinks there is some device (if only he could find it) that will make pain not to be pain? It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on."
"The terrible thing is that a perfectly good Arceus," he said, resuming some composure, "is hardly less formidable than a Cosmic Sadist. The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed, might grow tired of his vile sport, might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't."
"Either way," said Cobalion, "you're in for it."
"I'm in for it. But the horrors are unendurable."
"Would you rather have them happen to you, or Tess?"
"I never thought it was one-or-the-other."
"You're supposed to protect her, give her assurances. When you don't have kind words to offer to yourself, where are you then?"
"Let it happen to me," he said hastily, and the fervor of this statement nearly threw him off balance. "Let it happen to me a thousand times over. Let me be tortured, let my skin be fried, my mind broken. But oh God, don't let anything happen to her. And if it must for her to be closer to you, tenderly, tenderly. Already, month by month and week by week you've put her through hell. Is it not already enough?"
"I'll talk about this with you over food," said Cobalion. "And after you've eating, we're going to make a plan."
Bronze, looked, puzzled. Jonas looked up, puzzled. "A plan for what? There's nothing. There's nothing we can do. It's always been this way. The Emperor will live in the wild forever. Before me, before my father, before the ones who came before my father's father. Back and back and back. Never to be mended. The king will never return." Then, coldly, "I am going to die." His voice trailed on the phrase.
"Once you have a meal, you'll see, just as you always have, that there is a way. We'll make a plan for how you are going to become the Emperor of Roria. We'll make a plan about how to defeat the Alliance. And I received what I am going to tell you from Arceus..." Cobalion glanced at a clock. "Two hours ago."
Bronze watched him, and began to listen.